Horsing around

Hey, guess what - It's still winter here! Honestly it's getting kind of stupid now. It warmed up considerably, reaching 9 degrees on a couple of days (meaning I was sweating buckets because apparently anything above freezing is too hot for me now), so all the snow started melting (giving way to sloppy mud - joy!) only for it to dip back to zero one night, snow all day and all night and put us right back to where we started again. How I long for winter in England where we get two days of snow and lots of rain. Really I never thought I would be hoping for rain.

So another week, another  blog. I confess I am still struggling with this whole writing thing. I am still finding it difficult to come up with topics that I think are interesting enough to warrant a blog post, and most of all I am very much struggling with the fact that anything I write down I think is utter crap. I received some encouragement from my family though and was told some wise words spoken by my late grandfather who I unfortunately never got the chance to meet.

He said: "There is no such thing as useless information - Just information whose time has not yet arrived". This did put into perspective my idea that the stuff I am writing about is boring and dull because 'honestly who wants to read about endless days of snow'.

Enough of the depressing - onto the blog. With this seemingly endless winter continuing on, much to my chagrin, I have taken some advice and decided to talk about horse riding and horses in general.

When I planned my trip here I had no clue horses would be involved at all. I knew bears, moose, big cats and a whole host of other wildlife of varying sizes in between. What I didn't know was the shelter has a sister business in the shape of a trail riding company. When I first arrived here in summer I was invited to come on a couple of trail rides. Having never been on or near a horse before this was a bit daunting and also a bit exciting. There are also a few stories to tell because let's face it, it wouldn't be me if stuff didn't go hilariously and horribly wrong would it?

On my first trail ride, I was originally planning on riding a beautiful draft horse named Pixi. I fell in love with her as soon as I got her on the halter, only it turns out that she had been having some issues with bolting in the middle of trails recently. Putting someone with no horse experience on a horse that was likely to gallop off into the sunset without any prior warning was not the best idea it was concluded and instead I was left with Oprah. Oprah is a very sweet, very lovely old horse who unfortunately comes in one speed setting only - agonizingly slow. No matter what you do, what cues you give she will not go faster than her own snails pace, which meant that I ended up significantly and embarrassingly far behind the rest of the trail.

My second trail ride was arguably better and simultaneously worse at the same time. This time I was riding Tonka, another gorgeous white horse (Pictures of him can be seen back in my 'meet (some of) the animals' post from November), who did not have the tendency to go running away with his rider. He was very attentive, payed attention to my cues and this time I was able to keep up with the rest of the trail. Only Tonka seems to have his own agenda when it came to which horses he did and did not like. He appeared to have a strong dislike of the horse in front of me and kept nipping at it's butt. This didn't seem to be an issue (other than the noises of discomfort coming from the horse ahead), until it decided enough was enough and it kicked back at Tonka (who frankly deserved it at this point) sending him into a bit of a fit where he sped up and kicked back. Pretty nerve wracking when i'm on back clinging for dear life.


I also had the joy of going and visiting Ricki yesterday. Ricki is a foal born 2 months before I arrived at the shelter. He is quite possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life and I got to work with him a fair bit, feeding him each day. He has a huge personality for a young horse and we seemed to get along very well. He moved to a farm a short drive away as they were willing too look after him for the winter and with their heated stalls and huge acreage this was an opportunity we couldn't pass up. I visited him for the first time since we dropped him off before Christmas and I was so happy that he recognised me and instantly walked up for cuddles. It was the highlight of the week for me!

There are also seven foals being born this year, in May and June. I am hoping I will get to help out at least a little bit as I have discovered working here that I really do love horses. However there are going to be volunteers dedicated entirely to the horses and with baby season at the same time, I might not have enough time to do both. I will at least get to see cute little foals around the farm for a few months which I am looking forward too!

As I said in a previous post, we are hoping to start riding again soon, and this time I will also hopefully be having actual lessons, which should make me feel a bit more at ease with the whole trusting a horse with my life thing, because frankly I don't want to be bucked off anytime soon. I'll make sure to keep you posted about how the riding goes, because honestly it will probably be entertaining to say the least.

To ski or not to ski

To most of the people that know me, they understand that I am ... not the most graceful of people. I fall down a lot, trip over things, drop things, and am generally a bit of a klutz. Put me then, on two long strips of wood, on a snowy mountainside, holding onto two sticks and trembling with fear and we only have a recipe for disaster. I am of course, talking about skiing. I was lucky enough, for Christmas, to be given a ski day pass by the family here, as "You can't come to Canada in winter and not going skiing at least once". 

I was feeling both excited and terrified (Terracited as I have since dubbed it) as we were driven up the mountain in a creaky, yellow, old school bus. I put on my boots, strapped into my skis and started to walk/waddle the way I had been shown by a friend who came along too. Five minutes later I had not moved forward an inch having just performed the ski edition of the running man. Ten minutes later, I was on my butt in the snow, unable to get up. It was then decided that perhaps I needed an actual lesson, to avoid me spending the day sitting in the snow outside the lodge.

To give the instructor credit he was very patient with me, lifting me up countless times when I would fall over. He taught me how to form a 'pizza' with my skis so in theory I could slide slowly down the slope. He showed me how to hold on to the pulley to be pulled up the mountain and after about an hour I was skiing by myself and had gotten slightly more comfortable. 

Then he decided to take me up the T-Bar to a higher and steeper slope. Then everything went wrong again. As it turns out I have immense trouble actually steering myself, also going slowly. I ended up hurtling straight down the mountain, at speeds which were probably not considered safe for the bunny hill. The instructor screaming "Pizza! Pizza!" All the way down. Usually I would be happy to hear anything about pizza, only when faced with trying to stop without causing serious injury, I had to put my thoughts of food on hold and try to figure out a way to stop before I actually hit a child or something. I finally did this by just falling on my butt again. He picked me up and we tried again, only this time I couldn't right my skis and ended up going the whole way down the slope backwards. Strangely enough this was my best run of the day, I didn't fall over once and even managed to stop myself correctly. I can only assume that I just do things better in reverse. When I asked him if it was okay to do things backwards from now on I just got a big laugh in return. My guess is, it's not okay.

Safe to say skiing does not come naturally to me at all. I was later told that "They say you aren't doing it right or trying hard enough, if you aren't falling down a lot." Which made me feel a lot better. Shame it couldn't do much about the five year old's skiing circles around me all day though.

A grand miscalculation

I woke up today with absolutely no idea what I wanted to write about. Inspiration has been lacking all week, and while I usually have planned out what my blog post will be days in advance, this week I honestly had no clue. So with that in mind, in true British style, if all else fails - talk about the weather.

I knew that coming here for a year I would face extreme temperatures. I arrived in mid-August and on some days it went up to thirty degrees Celsius and I found myself thinking that this wasn't what I signed up for when moving to Canada. Canada is meant to be cold, snowy and everyone gets around using snow mobiles and dog sleds. That's the stereotype right? Wrong. Summer actually got pretty hot, so hot that on some days I thought it was unbearable, however I now find myself wishing more than anything that summer would return and heat up my frosty fingers. It isn't even officially winter yet, but it already drops to minus six at night and doesn't go above zero during the day. Everything freezes and the thick layer of frost in the morning makes even walking across the bridge hazardous. The worst part of all though, I think, is going from a twenty degree heated room back into the cold, those first ten minutes outside, experiencing the huge temperature drop is pure torture!

Unfortunately for me it's only set to get colder from now on. I'm told that minus thirty is not uncommon at the height of winter and seeing as I am already wearing two pairs of leggings under my jeans now, I think an urgent shopping trip will be required pretty soon. otherwise I'm not entirely sure how I will survive. I greatly underestimated just how cold it gets here and am now paying the price. My only saving grace is that my snow boots (which have got a great deal of use despite only getting the first snowfall yesterday) keep my feet warm enough, so that's one less things I have to worry about at least.